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Author: Leah Thomas

Series: Not sure (apparently there’s a sequel…?)

Rating: 5 stars

Genre: Contemporary (with possible sci-fi elements)

Synopsis: In a stunning literary debut, two boys on opposite ends of the world begin an unlikely friendship that will change their lives forever.

Ollie and Moritz are best friends, but they can never meet. Ollie is allergic to electricity. Contact with it causes debilitating seizures. Moritz’s weak heart is kept pumping by an electronic pacemaker. If they ever did meet, Ollie would seize. But Moritz would die without his pacemaker. Both hermits from society, the boys develop a fierce bond through letters that become a lifeline during dark times—as Ollie loses his only friend, Liz, to the normalcy of high school and Moritz deals with a bully set on destroying him.

A story of impossible friendship and hope under strange circumstances, this debut is powerful, dark and humorous in equal measure. These extraordinary voices bring readers into the hearts and minds of two special boys who, like many teens, are just waiting for their moment to shine.

How I got this book: Netgalley

Release Date: July 2, 2015

The Short Version:

This was a very enjoyable book. I was quite fond of both Ollie and Moritz, the story telling was fabulous and I loved the whole letter-writing thing.

WARNING: The Long Version contains minor spoilers.

The Long Version:

Because You’ll Never Meet Me is about two boys. Both cut off from their respective worlds for various reasons, they begin writing letters to each other, becoming friends even though they can never meet.

Ollie is bored. He is cut off from the outside world because of his severe allergy to electricity. He cannot even pass under the power line at the edge of the property he lives on.

Unfortunately, the nature of Ollie’s condition is that he doesn’t have a lot of friends, which makes boredom pretty inevitable.

I loved Ollie’s character. He was so sweet and random and got distracted by everything.

Moritz has a pacemaker, electricity is the thing that keeps him alive. It is this that means he can never meet Ollie in person, but his exclusion from society is for another reason: he has no eyes.

It takes him a while to admit this to Ollie, who is constantly bombarding him with talk of ‘secret labs’ and ‘super heroes’, but when he does we also find out that Moritz also has developed very accurate echolocation. He doesn’t need his eyes to see. Another thing about Moritz is that he isn’t very fond of people in general.

Like Ollie, I loved Moritz from the beginning. Even though he was mean and stand-offish at first, I couldn’t help it. It was obvious that there was a reason for his dislike for people in general, and as the story went on, as he began to trust Ollie more and more and began to tell him more about himself and his life, I continued to love his character.

As if the characters were not amazing enough, the writing was also fabulous. The story is told through the letters the boys write to each other, and each voice was so distinctive it actually felt like they were real letters.

And then there’s the story itself. So well told, which such good characters, the mixture of the reader finding out what had happened in the past with what was happening in the present just made me want to keep reading and not stop.

In Conclusion:

Great characters, great writing, great story, great book.

I absolutely loved it.